


Enigma Cornucopia

by acidbathh



Series: Literary Character Studies [2]
Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, its probably from the perspective of ringo or soemthing, the first half is just a big ramble about tom, the rest is. rlly gay, there's a bunch of shitty jokes in here, you'll know what i mean by that when you read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 22:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18186683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidbathh/pseuds/acidbathh
Summary: Tord didn't like Tom, but he didn't hate him either. He thinks he might be a little bit gay for him, actually.





	Enigma Cornucopia

**Author's Note:**

> this is far from my first fic on this hellsite, but it's the first one on this account. its 4 am, my computer is lagging like hell as i'm typing up this fic and plan on posting it as is with no beta reading, no first draft, and whatever i feel like putting in it. if you wanna check me out on tumblr, you can do so @clementine-woolysocks, keep in mind i change my URL like a girl changes clothes

Tom is a very acquired taste of person. 

First off, he's very real, as in he's blunt, doesn't lie to people about what he likes and doesn't like. One time, Matt came out of his room wearing a shirt that said "Gucci" on it, and he asked everyone what they thought. Tom said this: 

"I hate that shirt with the burning passion of the hellfire from whence it came. I, personally, will make sure that your soul gets put not in Heaven, nor Hell, but in the bland and dead obscurity that lies between, where you will be forgotten for the rest of eternity." 

Tom isn't a very poetic person. He doesn't smother his words in flowery concepts and metaphors, and when he makes a threat, he damn well follows up on that threat to the best of his ability, or at least attempts to do so before someone has to pick him up and carry him out of the room. Tom is angry and short, and that makes him a lot more capable to kill a man than a person at average height. There's no studies to conclude this definitely, but his friends are sure that if he got pissed enough, he could and would kill someone, and that body would never be found. If he hasn't done so already, they'd be lucky to even find out. 

Tom is very blunt. He doesn't understand social cues, has the manners of a monkey at a tea party, and the dining habits of a toddler on heroine. He's the kind of person to scratch his ass, then his face, and then shake your hand, in that order, all with the same hand, and then proceed not to understand why one might find that gross. He also knows a lot of incredibly useless information on just about everything for seemingly no reason, yet he can't remember any of his supposed best friend's birthdays, and always fails to get them a gift every year, and then eats half, if not most of the birthday cake. 

A lot of Tom's mannerisms can be traced back to his inability to understand social cues and people, even if he can read rooms and situations and people really well. Just because he knows what's going on doesn't mean he understands it at all. He's incredibly observant, but has an incredibly selective memory that only focuses on what Tom subconsciously thinks is somehow important, instead of what he consciously knows to be important. So even though he notices all sorts of things about people and places all the time, he'll probably forget them within five minutes because it's not interesting enough to focus on. 

Despite these little, infuriating things, Tom is an incredibly interesting and complex person. His bluntness and sarcasm, as well as his dark humour, provides a very interesting contrast between the usually upbeat and optimistic attitudes of his roommates. Even though Edd is certainly an asshole, he is very much quite the opposite of a pessimist, and chooses to look on the bright sides of things, always looking for the silver-lining, even if it's just, "Hey, at least we're alive". 

While being incredibly smart, Tom also loves to prove just how much of a dumbass he can be, more often at his own expense than others, and he always does it for a laugh, which is another thing he's good at doing: Making people laugh. Despite appearing to be a small, bitter creature that could kill you with a stare, over his admittedly rough lifetime, he's developed quite a knack for comedy. One of his favourite things to make jokes about is himself. Not even in a self-deprecating way, more like he knows what he did was dumb as fuck, and he's willing to laugh at how fucking dumb it was. He tends to get over most mistakes pretty easily, especially if they're funny. 

The story of how Tom ended up dropping out of college is a fairly interesting story. 

 

Basically, Tom went to college because of pressure from his foster dad. He didn't like it. At all. 

One day while driving, he got into an awful car accident that caused his car to land in a ditch on it's side. He was half conscious, half either passing out, or heavily dissociating, and was stuck for over an hour before anybody found him because of the fact that he was obscured by trees. He was found by two hikers who called an ambulance, and then he came out with a cool new scar, an awful concussion, a broken arm, and a whole new view of the world.

Before the accident, his thought process was a lot like this: 

"Nothing matters." As in, "Nothing matters, we're all going to die, so why bother." 

After the accident, his thought process was exactly the same, but in a completely different flavour. 

"Nothing matters." As in, "Nothing fucking matters, time is a fucking construct, I'm going to eat eggs for dinner, fuck you. I'm gonna be happy, dammit." 

In simple terms, he went from depressed pessimist, to chaotically optimistic nihilist. 

After the accident, his grades in college started going up because he was less stressed due to the fact that he didn't give a shit. Nobody was really sure how that worked, but it did, for a while. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he dropped out. He barely gave an explanation to his friends other than when he was sitting on the living room couch after his roommates got home after a party, and he said, "Oh yeah, I dropped out today." Then continued to eat the burrito he had in his hands. His friends were shocked, but vaguely supportive. Tom then quit his job as a cashier at the local supermarket, and got a job as a bartender instead, and was surprisingly good at it. Which was good, because he made a lot more money there. 

On the side, he'd started making music with one of his closest friends from high school, Laurel. Their music was essentially a weird amalgamation of several different genres that shouldn't have gone together, and was incredibly chaotic, in an outsider's stance, but was actually quite nice to listen to. It was an odd thing that every song had a completely different compositional style, but it fit, but it all managed to work together in some way. They mostly did stuff at Laurel's house because it was usually quieter, and there were less neighbours to get angry at them for being loud and bad at music sometimes. They did surprisingly well, creating a mystified fanbase, (that was more of an underground cult, really), that had never seen their faces because Tom was still a bit too anxious to do anything on stage in front of people. His new mindset bit off a huge part of his depression and anxiety, but not exactly all of it. Nevertheless, his friends were all still proud of him, and his foster dad and sister were, too. It was pretty cool, honestly. Who knew brain trauma could weirdly do something good for someone? 

After several years, Tom still makes music with Laurel, and the two are incredibly close. He still has a drinking problem, but it is (usually) not life-threatening, even though he's still an asshole when he drinks, and he's an addict. He still suffers from anxiety and depression, which totally fucking sucks bull's ass, but at least he gets out of bed most days. Eventually. 

All of these things are what make Tom a really interesting and dynamic person. He doesn't really give a shit about what anyone thinks of him, mostly did shit just for kicks, and was, despite still having a rather low opinion of himself, was somehow the god of ironic self love and confidence. Over the years, while he's never completely gone cold turkey, or officially quit, he managed to cut back on the alcohol a lot, which was a pretty good thing. He still was insistent that he'd never set foot in an AA meeting so long as he lived, and so far, he's kept his promise.

Tom was also an incredibly chaotic person. The kind of person you'd find behind a Denny's at two in the morning. The kind of person who fought God and was unimpressed. He was the cursed love-child of Stanley from The Office, and Old Man Henderson, from ~~Trail~~ Call of Cthulu. He, too, has a three-hundred page backstory that justifies everything he does, explains exactly why he is the way he is, and somehow makes everything he says and does, no matter how stupid or crazy it is, okay. 

This is all what made Tom a really fucking cool person, even despite his flaws. Tord actually kind of liked Tom, despite the fact that he says "rad", "dope", "groovy", "sick" and "wicked" to describe things he likes, yet uses phrases like "From what level of Hell was this retrieved", and "Both God and the Devil fear humanity, and that is why they stay in the safety of their respective homes" to express his distaste in things. By themselves, using these phrases and words is fine, but, like, the fact that Tom can use the words "vehement" and "cuntbucket" in the same sentence, (especially to describe someone!), is incredibly terrifying, and aggravating. Tom has a knack for concocting the worst and most ominous sentences to ever exist, and to be honest, it strikes genuine fear in Tord's heart. 

A great example was the time he said this: 

"When earthquakes happen, coffins with corpses in them become underground maracas." 

That was a thought that Tord needed at ten in the morning, when all he wanted to do was eat his breakfast bacon. 

Tord didn't really know what to do with a person like Tom, who was so blunt and chaotic and gave so few shits that it was a feat he even used the bathroom at all. He kind of guessed that there was something about him that was keeping him hooked. Maybe his predictably unpredictability. Or his fucking jokes that ended up either being really shitty puns, or just his own tales of him being a fucking idiot. For the longest time, it got him incredibly frustrated, the way Tom was. He was too chaotic, too laid back, and had too few manners. He didn't understand people, and kind of hated them, which pissed Tord off because he was an extrovert who found people endlessly fascinating. He loved studying cultures and listening to people's stories, but Tom couldn't give any less of a shit if he were constipated. 

Tord didn't like that he found Tom's jokes as funny as he did. They weren't even that funny, they were just bad puns and punchlines, and yet he's laughing the hardest at them. To the point where Tom is asking if he's alright, albeit in a lighthearted manner, but still. Tord found himself fascinated with the way Tom's mind worked, even in situations where he was being an asshole by reading a situation but not exactly understanding it entirely. Tord especially hated that Tom questioned and challenged his masculinity, and even his definition of masculine with his own version of it, which was basically "everything is unisex if you're not a little bitch about it", (and Tom was true to his word on that one), and "nothing is manlier than a guy who can go buy a box of tampons for his girlfriend and to not just be incredibly weird about it to the cashier", respectively. 

Tord kind of hated that because he knew that Tom was (somewhat) right about it, and that sucked. 

Tord didn't like that his chest felt funny whenever Tom smiled or laughed or looked even remotely happy, even if it was at his own expense. That little funny feeling in his chest felt so nice, it was practically addicting. He would explicitly try to make him smile or laugh, or even just do that thing where you sharply exhale through your nose when you see something kinda funny on the internet. He found himself appreciating things about Tom's appearance, too. 

While Tom wasn't exactly conventionally attractive, well, uh. That was basically it. He wasn't conventionally attractive. In fact, he kind of had this sort of, uh, well, he was kind of ugly, really. He had a big forehead, and tiny ears, and a big, pointy nose, and a round, yet thin face. He had crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, and bags under them, too, and wrinkles in his forehead and brows and by his mouth, even though he wasn't particularly old enough to look as old as he did. He also kept this scruff on his face, because otherwise he looked like a twelve-year-old heroine addict, and bars weren't sure if they could let him in, no matter how real his ID appeared. But those things kind of added to his character. His charm, if you wanted to call it that. Not that he was charming in any way, though. 

Tord still found himself appreciating Tom's features, the weird ones and the good ones. He had even and pretty lips, and high cheekbones, and a nice eye-shape. He's also heard Matt say that Tom had perfect brows on several occasions. Not to mention that Tom's bone structure as a whole was generally really satisfying, even though he came out a few sizes too small. He had a smaller torso and lower waist with longer legs. Well, compared to the rest of his body they were long. When he gained weight, it didn't settle like it did in the average guy. Mostly, he'd become more bottom-heavy, which was something he hated so much. He didn't exactly have feminine hips, but Tord had definitely gotten caught looking at his ass on occasion. He even once thought to himself about how Tom was even kinda doable, followed by a very explicit image put into his mind that he couldn't get out for the rest of the day. 

He even found the fact that Tom was four-feet, eleven-inches tall to be pretty cute. Terrifying, because Tom would still climb a dangerously stacked assortment of objects just to reach the top shelf, but cute, at the same time. Now Tord was about average height, five-feet, eight-inches, so he easily towered over Tom. Tom would barely even have to get on his knees to blow Tord, he could just bend over a bit and be pretty much fine. He laughed at the thought. 

Eventually, Tord figured out what was going on. He was... Kinda gay for Tom. He didn't really know what to do with this information, so he just stuffed it deep, deep down in him and tried to forget about it, but of course that didn't work. When Tom dated other people, he got jealous, especially if it was another guy. 

This went on all throughout Tom's time in college, until he dropped out, and even then, long past that. 

 It wasn't until one day, when Tord and Tom were supposed to go out and get groceries while Edd and Matt stayed home and did... Whatever, that things between them started shifting. It was pretty interesting to watch from the outside, because they were so close, yet so far, and they were both completely oblivious and, well, generally stupid. As all Hell. 

Tom couldn't drive because not only was his eyesight getting pretty bad, lately, he also got his licence revoked a few years ago, and hadn't even tried to get it back because of the circumstances he'd lost it under. So, that left Tord to drive while Tom handled music. He played Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz, which was probably a weird choice, considering it was kind of a love song, but Tom didn't seem to care all that much, he just liked the song. Tord thought it got a bit repetitive at times, but he liked the meaning behind it, and didn't say anything while it played, then switched to another song. 

He'd never been a huge Gorillaz fan, but Tom seemed to like them, so he liked them, too. 

Before they got into the store, Tom put in his earbuds, and Tord wouldn't fully understand why until much later, but when he walked into the grocery store and noticed how fucking loud it was for some reason, he seemed to get that much and didn't bother him about it. Tom didn't really do much other than follow Tord while he looked for groceries, kinda like some sort of lost puppy. It was actually kinda cute. Tord still felt weird admitting that he found his tiny, angry roommate cute, but, hey, he wasn't saying it out loud, right? 

He and Tom went and got the groceries without any incidents, then they paid. When Tom went to grab the grocery bags from the belt, Tord's hand brushed against his, and they looked at each other for a second, before Tord turned a little pink, and looked away, opting to just grab the groceries instead. Tom seemed to take that sudden reaction and process it for a second, squinting at him. It was like he had all the puzzle pieces, and he was putting them together, but he didn't know what to do with the information he had just yet. He and Tord put the groceries into the cart, and took them out to the car. Tom loaded them into the back while Tord put the cart away and started the car. Tom shivered a bit in the chilly weather, pulling his hood around his neck, like some sort of built in scarf. He then proceeded to climb in the car, taking out his earbuds. 

"So you gonna tell me what that was?" He asked. "What what was?" Tord said, as he began to carefully drive his way out of the parking lot. "That face you made when you touched my hand?" He asked. He sounded pretty disinterested. His voice sounded nasally, like his nose was stuffy. "Wh- I don't know what you're talking about." Tord tried to keep his eyes on the road. Tom rolled his non-eyes and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. "Right." He said. "That's why you turned bright pink." Tom smirked, and it was clear he knew what was going on, now. Tord looked more and more flustered as time went on. He wasn't a very intimidating guy in the first place, just a kinda scrawny, average-height white dude with an accent and a tooth-gap that would give him a lisp if he talked too fast. Tom knew this, and could definitely use this to his advantage. 

"Wow, that shut you up." Tom said, snorting. Tord didn't really know what to say anymore. "You're kinda cute when you're flustered, you know that?" It was clear that Tord did not have the upper hand in this conversation, and he didn't like it. He liked being in control, he liked having the upper hand, he liked winning. He was a competitive spirit, and to find himself like this, losing to someone who was four-feet eleven-inches was not exactly ideal. He took a deep breath in before pulling the car over the side of the road. "What're you doing?" Tom said, more curious than worried. 

Tord looked at Tom from across the median of the car, and it looked like he was weighing his options. Tom had his phone in his hand, open on some social media or another that Tord didn't really care about right now, because he was looking at Tom's face in full, with a very determined expression. His eye twitched a bit. Tom blinked and looked around the car a bit. "You plan on, like, doing anything, or what-" Tord then grabbed Tom by the face and kissed him. His eyes were shut tight, while Tom's were slightly widened in mildly interested shock. 

When Tord pulled away, Tom merely had his brows raised, like he'd been waiting for that. "Took you long enough, you dip." Tom said. Tord made a face. "Huh?" He said. Tom then took off his seat-belt and climbed over the median dividing them, and grabbed Tord by the hood of his jacket and kissed him with a little more passion and less awkwardness than Tord. "We can't fuck, we have frozens." Tom said when he abruptly pulled apart from the kiss. "Drive." Tom said. Tord looked confused. "Huh?" He asked. "DRIVE." Tom demanded, and Tord pulled off the side of the road and began to drive home. 

"Does this mean we're, like..." Tord drifted off because he was a nervous nerd. "Dating?" Tom said. "I dunno, do you wanna date?" He said, sniffing, then wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket. That whole scene couldn't have been more Tom, and in that moment, he'd decided that, yeah, he kinda wanted to date Tom. 

Suddenly, Tom looked a bit afraid. "Dude, eyes on the fucking road!" Tom moved Tord's head to look out the windshield. Tord laughed. What an interesting relationship they were bound to have. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you have any reviews or any other ideas you want me to do, let me know in the comments below, dont forget to like and subscribe


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